The Hidden Fortress

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #116: Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s The Hid­den Fortress.

Well it has been 9 months since I last reviewed a Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion film. I sup­pose hav­ing a 7‑month old will do that to you. I had a chance to sit down last night and watch The Hid­den Fortress. I might be a bit rusty, but this film did­n’t seem as high-qual­i­ty as most of Kuro­sawa’s out­put. The only char­ac­ter who exhibits any devel­op­ment is Princess Yuki, and although she’s the focus of all of the action, as a char­ac­ter she’s pret­ty sec­ondary. The two peas­ants, Tahei and Matak­ishi, are in the fore through­out the film, and their slap­stick kept the film from delv­ing into the deep­er conun­drums that bound around in the wings.

Every­body is try­ing to find or save Princess Yuki, the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the Akizu­ki clan. Our two boors buf­fet about due to the tides of war and their own avarice, seek­ing either the Akizu­ki gold or Yuki Akizu­ki, as their whims dic­tate. Toshi­ro Mifu­ne [play­ing Toshi­ro Mifu­ne as Rotoku­ra Mak­abe] ropes them into haul­ing the gold and the princess through, across, around [and var­i­ous oth­er prepo­si­tions] ene­my lines. Every plan Tahei and Matak­ishi ‘devise’ fails imme­di­ate­ly, and they try to run off with the gold almost as much as they fight each oth­er. There is one 10 minute Toshi­ro spear-fight show­case show­down in which Mr. Mifu­ne’s whit­tled fore­arms are the main scene, but the rest of the film pret­ty much con­sists of folks bitch­ing up and down [and var­i­ous oth­er prepo­si­tions] myr­i­ad roads.

This is not to say that the film is with­out val­ue. Kuro­sawa’s eye for the right fram­ing and sub­tle phras­ing is as on the mark as it ever is; stop­ping at an inn for the evening we find out that with 5 pieces of sil­ver you can either buy a good horse or a pros­ti­tute [per­ma­nent­ly]. The ham-fist­ed peas­ants live in sty-squalor and are herd­ed about by porcine pet­ty lords and their pig-head­ed vas­sals. The objec­tive eye indi­cates that all par­ties are a bit absurd in their human­i­ty. Every­one is hap­py with sta­tus quo except Princess Yuki, who gets her first taste of how the oth­er 99.9% lives and gains the right­eous indig­na­tion on the behalf of her infe­ri­ors that hard-time-fall­en nobil­i­ty always seem to exhib­it in fic­tion. She does have nice legs, how­ev­er.

I guess what sank the movie for me was the way the con­stant breaks for a bit of lev­i­ty under­cut the dra­ma at the same time that Mifu­ne’s fur­rowed dis­ap­proval killjoyed the clown­ing slap­stick [which I’m not real­ly a fan of any­way]. Toss in a plot that isn’t all that com­pelling or orig­i­nal and 2D char­ac­ters with unchang­ing moti­va­tions and the result is that I might have enjoyed this movie if I had seen it before Star Wars [Lucas claims The Hid­den Fortress as an inspi­ra­tion for that uni­verse, but there are only very basic and tan­gen­tial rela­tions between the two]. The sto­ry prob­a­bly won’t keep you going, but the hope for the next excep­tion­al shot will.